I take extreme exception with your assertion in this editorial, as will anyone who has read transcripts from the Constitutional Convention that produced our form of government, the Electoral College, and the Constitution.

At that convention there were several impasses that almost prevented our ever becoming a nation, and the biggest impediment was how to give smaller states some level of representative equality with the larger ones. That we have both a “House of Representatives” based solely on a state’s population that favors the larger states, as well as the “Senate” where every state has equal representation regardless of size is the most obvious compromise needed to get by that impasse. The other major part of this compromise is the Electoral College that you say is “outdated”. It too exists to prevent the larger states from dominating the choice of President just from their sheer superiority of population numbers. And the continued need for the Electoral College was explicitly borne out in the 2004 presidential results.

In that election it was not the “blue states” that voted for John Kerry, it was the “blue” cities, as seen in the map depicting counties that voted either “red” or “blue”. Specifically, President Bush won 2,540 counties to John Kerry’s 583. In land mass, the counties George Bush won comprise 2,540,000 square miles of the country whereas John Kerry’s amount to only 592,000. But John Kerry won every city having a population of 500,000 or more. Specific implications of this can be seen in the following examples:

Illinois voted almost completely Republican except for Chicago, which voted for Kerry and in sufficient numbers to give the entire state to him. Michigan voted almost completely Republican except for Detroit, Kalamazoo, and Lansing, which voted for Kerry, and whose numbers were adequate to overwhelm all the votes of the rest of the state. The entire West Coast of the country voted almost entirely Republican except for the cities Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, that voted for Kerry and in sufficient numbers to overwhelm the rest of all the votes in those states.

Surely this exemplifies how, and why, the Electoral College and our bicameral form of government are needed to prevent most of the country from being dominated by the cities whose populations exceeded 500,000 people. If the Electoral College is abolished, the largest 35 to 60 cities in the country will determine who the President will be and national level politics dominated by voters who want more services provided in major cities by the government supported with taxes form most of us who will never have access to those benefits.

Our Constitutional Convention participants established a Republic, and not a democracy, explicitly to avoid this “tyranny of the majority”, which is the desired outcome of the National Popular Vote campaign. Think of it: if this campaign is successful, the votes by residents of only the 50 or so largest cities will determine who governs the entire country.

As a newspaper, the Denver Post should be ashamed for supporting such an unfair, unrepresentative proposal. It can only harm most of the residents of this state, and in particular all of those who do not live in Denver.

How ridiculous to be worrying about “land mass” and arbitrary political boundaries instead of what really matters, people. How can any fair-minded person accept that a presidential voter just across the border in Wyoming has three times the clout of a voter in Colorado?

I really donâ€™t follow your logic, Jerry. You ask for equality, but thatâ€™s exactly what the Electoral College prohibits. As Docjay points out, a voter in Wyoming has more power than a voter in a more populous state. Thatâ€™s not equality. Equality is one person, one vote. You argue equality, yet advocate giving people in rural areas more power than those in cities. Equality is based on people, not boundaries.

Reid, your comment is way off the mark and makes absolutely no sense. Eliminating the Electoral College will only INCREASE the power one citizen has and will increase voter turnout. I have lived in two states (Idaho and Massachusetts) where my vote had absolutely no power. Why vote in Idaho when you know it will go Republican? Why even vote in Mass when you know it will go Democrat? This problem goes away with the elimination of the Electoral College. With a straight-up one person/one vote scenario, your vote counts no matter where you live: Massachusetts or Colorado, city or rural area. Reid you voice gets drowned out by Denver and Front Range voters now! They all vote Democrat and rural voters get screwed. If you eliminated the College, you wouldnâ€™t have to worry about that.

Changing how Colorado, and every state, votes their electoral college must be done through the constitution of the states, if not by the US constitution.

Voters rejected Amendment 36 in Colorado in 2004, and now Sen. Ken Gordon and his George Soros, MoveOn ultra-socialist supporters have devised a clever scheme to sidestep the constitution.

Their tactics and goals are repulsive. They claim to speak for the people and democracy, yet seek out undemocratic, singular contol of the process.

The system serves us well. Can you imagine 50 Floridas of 2000 each election, recount after recount, hanging chads, etc.?

I, too, fear the tyranny of city dwellers who have no empathy or life’s experiences in common with rural folk, yet they would have the votes to force their values on rural America, forever.

This is precisely the sort of outrageous entrenching of power and control in the hands of a distinctly undiverse constituency, and would never have been agreed to by the states as they joined the republic, and will not be agreed to today by non-urban Americans.

Shame on every entity behind this atrocious concept and end-run around a system that has served us well for 220 years.

Yes, people matter – because the current system makes them matter. Docjay and his ilk don’t want any rural voters to matter, though, and could care less about disregarding the system rules that have ensured people matter so as to achieve his/her goal of letting only his/her kind of people matter.

Since members of the electoral college are not obligated to vote the same way that their districts vote, it doesn’t matter whether you live in the city or in outlying areas — your vote might not count at all.

That decision is entirely up to the electoral college membership — and that is the problem.

What an absurd statement: “And the continued need for the Electoral College was explicitly borne out in the 2004 presidential results.” In the 2004 presidiential election the setup of the Electoral College just directed the GOP cheaters where to cheat (Ohio and Florida). Have you forgotten that reputible statisticians
put the variance in the “official results” and the exit polls at close to 1,000,000 to one for each state. I think the electoral college is more than outdated, it is discriminitory and a invitation to cheat, especially when you have Wally O’Dell of Diebold voting systems saying he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” Scrap the electoral college and do away with black box voting, I say.

Please correct me with facts that can be confirmed if I am wrong, but I don’t think any of this talk about changing our voting system away from a republic to that of a pure democracy by eliminating the Electoral College until the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. That sound like a bunch of whining sore loosers don’t like the legal outcome and have to devalue it by calling the winners “cheaters.”

Democracies rarely last, our’s is a constitutional republic. The tyranny of the majority will make for revolution, violent if necessary. Justification for this is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.

I find the argument of most who try to change the Constitution by state law as illegal period.
But just to see the real problem with some peoples thinking, lets look at the numbers of the state of Colorado, provided by the division of Local Government says, that the population of all of Colorado is 4,722,000 est. on 2006 records.
The combined population, of just the three counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, and Orange counties in California is 12.9 million. We do have 58 counties in California, and a state population of 33 million.
So if you do want California to run the mountain west policies then you will surely find you are not in charge anymore, or have no voice in your own way of life.
I do not think that is democracy, but a dictatorship, but then you get what you vote for?

Jerry’s letter looks at the world through 1789 eyes instead of 2007 eyes. First, although the Electoral College was originally set up to favor smaller states, it now favors bigger states because the biggest 11 total more than the 270 needed to elect. Second, he seems to suggest that the votes of Americans who live in population centers shouldn’t count much as those in rural areas that encompass larger land masses. (Perhaps he’d like to go back to the original intent, in which only land-owning white males could vote.) Sorry, Jerry, but the U.S. ceased to be an agrarian society decades and decades ago. Presidents should be elected by direct popular vote, in which every vote in La Junta would count just as much as every vote in Boulder.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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